Who is Laurie Ruth Ferber of MF Global?

Laurie Ferber is MF Global's general counsel, and was previously a managing director of Goldman Sachs and general counsel of Drexel Burnham Lambert. More recently, she co-authored the December 2, 2011 letter to the CFTC arguing against many of the contemplated changes to CFTC Rule 1.25, which governs the investment of customer segregated funds. Yes, the same funds that have gone missing to the tune of over $500 million, which has given the excuse for Trustee Giddens,
working
billing at $891 per hour, to freeze ALL customer cash..billions of dollars spread over 50,000 active accounts. We highlighted this letter in our previous expose of MF Global's shady dealings here.

She also attended this meeting:

And this one:

"Alternatives to Credit Ratings" is the Rulemaking subsection that regarded reforms to Rule 1.25, investments of customer funds.

[Update] She also wrote this email to regulators on October 31, 2011, the day MF Global filed for bankruptcy, to advise of "a significant shortfall in segregated funds account".

Her full work bio is here:

Ms. Laurie R. Ferber serves as the General Counsel of MF Global Holdings Ltd. Ms. Ferber is responsible for legal and compliance functions, has operational and administrative responsibility for internal audit function, and is also responsible for regulatory relationships. She joined MF Global in 2009 and plays a key role in developing and implementing MF Global's corporate strategy. She is also responsible for managing litigation, compliance and regulatory matters of MF Global. Ms. Ferber served as Chief Regulatory Officer and General Counsel of International Derivatives Clearing Group, LLC since February 2009 and was responsible for all its legal and regulatory affairs, including compliance and a variety of corporate governance issues. She served as a Managing Director at Goldman, Sachs & Co. Prior to International Derivatives Clearing Group, from 1987 to 2008, she served in a number of capacities at Goldman Sachs & Co., including as General Counsel of J. Aron & Company and Co-General Counsel of the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities Division. Ms. Ferber also headed Goldman Sachs Derivatives Legal Group, and spent much of the last 9 years developing new businesses, including Economic Derivatives. She served as Chief of Staff of the Global Business Selection and Conflicts Group at Goldman and worked on its transition to a Bank Holding Company. Earlier in her career, she was an Attorney with the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and thereafter with Schulte, Roth & Zabel. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Ms. Ferber was general counsel of Drexel Burnham Lambert Trading Corp. and also traded energy products. She began her legal career in 1980 as an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and then at Schulte, Roth & Zabel. She is a Trustee of the Institute of Financial Markets and of New York University School of Law. She serves as a Director of the Futures Industry Association and on the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Financial Markets, and is a Member of the Lincoln Center Business Council. Ms. Ferber holds B.S. from State University of New York at Buffalo and earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Ferber was likely placed at MF Global in 2009 by J. Christopher Flowers, one of Global's largest shareholders and also a Goldman alum. This would have paved the way for ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine to take the helm in February 2010.

Update: It seems Ms. Ferber almost single-handedly made commodities an asset class when she obtained this secret exemption letter from the CFTC, which did not surface until 2008. The letter was written to her by Jean Webb, CFTC Secretary, when Ms. Ferber was General Counsel of J. Aaron & Company, owned by Goldman Sachs. It granted an exemption to speculative position limits in commodities based on the hedging activities related to the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index. Matt Taibbi wrote about this here, but got his facts wrong, confusing the recipient (Ferber) with the sender (Webb).

Below is an excerpt from a post we wrote last year about how the GSCI was unexpectedly rebalanced in the summer of 2006 right as Paulson came into the Bush administration. It was the energy component that was substantially revised downward, which led to immediate forced selling and lower gas prices into the election. From this filing, we know Ferber sat on the GSCI Policy Committee at the time. She would have been the energy expert.

Ms. Ferber is also currently on the board of the Futures Industry Association, which wrote this letter in 2003 to support new rules that would allow repos with customer funds without notification or opt-out. We have not been able to establish if Ms. Ferber was on the board in 2003.

Excerpt from "Ex-Goldmanite Gary Gensler "Tickled Pink" as CFTC Ramps Up for Price Fixing"

A prime example is the rebalancing of the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) that took place in the summer of 2006. At the time, about $60 billion tracked the index, including some large pension funds, which would allocate a portion of their assets to purchasing commodity futures contracts in the exact weightings prescribed by the index. A change in the index composition would trigger buying or selling in the days and weeks that followed. There are several such commodity indexes, and they are periodically rebalanced pursuant to announced schedules, usually annually. However, according to the New York Times, on August 9, 2006, Goldman announced it would not roll over certain gasoline futures contracts into newly reformulated contracts. The result:

Unleaded gasoline made up 8.72 percent of Goldman’s commodity index as of June 30, but it is just 2.3 percent now, representing a sell-off of more than $6 billion in futures contract weighting.

...

Wholesale prices for New York Harbor unleaded gasoline, the major gasoline contract traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, dropped 18 cents a gallon on Aug. 10, to $1.9889 a gallon, a decline of more than 8 percent, and they have dropped further since then.

Rob Kirby quoted Bill King, who had taken notice at the time:

Goldman's changes probably induced arbs, commercial hedgers, and other traders to sell September and October unleaded gasoline future contracts to avoid possible (settlement, delivery, etc.) problems.

September futures expired in August; October contracts expire September 29. So unleaded gasoline prices collapsed in August and September.

For the conspiracy minded, note that ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson was sworn in as Treasury Secretary just a month prior in July, 2006, and that rising gas prices were becoming an issue for the approaching mid-term elections. The fall in the energy complex not only led to relief at the pump, but a pretty drastic (but short-lived) selloff in commodities overall.